I know I have posted this in some blog or another before, but it's one of those things that is part of me. Mainly because it is a deeply imbedded childhood memory. Songs that mother sang to me as a child while putting me to bed. One of those songs that reminds me of love. First love, loving that primary caregiver in that symbiotic way that children do with that person. Mom is old now. Very old. Her age is beginning to tell now. She did not have the strength to travel on to Arkansas to visit when she went to Houston a few weeks back. I have a feeling she went to Houston to say goodbye to some of her siblings. I am not sure she will be travelling this way again. Not in this flesh in this life time anyway.

These are the kind of things you think of when your parents grow old and you know that life does not last forever. You don't so much remember the pain they caused you anymore. Hopefully you have healed from all that and gone on with life. Hopefully you have had some kind of resolution, a forgiving over all the hurts. Hopefully what is left as the vivid memories are something as simple and tender as a song about loving your child.  

Please feel free to follow the link to listen to a midi of this song: 

http://www.contemplator.com/wales/allnight.html

All Through the Night

Sleep my child and peace attend thee,
All through the night
Guardian angels God will send thee,
All through the night
Soft the drowsy hours are creeping
Hill and vale in slumber sleeping,
I my loving vigil keeping
All through the night.

While the moon her watch is keeping
All through the night
While the weary world is sleeping
All through the night
O'er they spirit gently stealing
Visions of delight revealing
Breathes a pure and holy feeling
All through the night.

Love, to thee my thoughts are turning
All through the night
All for thee my heart is yearning,
All through the night.
Though sad fate our lives may sever
Parting will not last forever,
There's a hope that leaves me never,
All through the night.

I love you Mom, I love you Dad. Don't ever forget or doubt that.

Ciao

Ok, Sue found me a before pic on her computer. This is not the largest I got before I started losing 18 months ago, but it's close. I was close to 280 before I started losing weight. I am probably somewhere around 260 here. So technically I am almost 100 pounds less in the after pictures. So now you have a sort of baseline to judge the loss by.....

Ciao

This is me as of about an hour ago. This is for those of you who haven't had the opportunity to see me in real life in the last 10 months. I wanted to put a before and after pic up here, but I couldn't get any of the before pics of me to upload. Oh well, if you know me well, you know how big I was.

Now you can see what changing your whole life style looks like in real time. No one recognizes me anymore. I don't care, I prefer looking normal to people recognizing me on the street.

Ciao

All went well at the surgeon's office yesterday. She had me take the brace off and I have been in pain ever since. Well, since it got cold anyway. It's turned chilly here. Too much for my incision anyway. I am sitting here with a heating pad on the wound site hoping the heat will take the pain away. I may actually have to take one of my few remaining Lortabs tonight to sleep. We still do not have heat in the house. They don't deliver the propane tank until next week. Perhaps by next Friday we will have heat. Until then we are freezing. Space heaters just don't cut it when it gets this cold this fast.

Anyway, I asked the surgeon if they had a plastics department there. She perked right up and said, not only yes, but that her husband was one of the 2 plastic and reconstructive guys there. So I asked her if I could see him. She said sure and whisked me off to make an appointment.

So I go in November 28th to have him look at Rocky and Bullwinkle and see how much it will be to get them removed forever from my arms and legs. So far the plastics guys here in Rogers gave me a quote of $8000. I told him I would see him when I saved up the bucks. He wants payment up front. UAMS does not. UAMS will let me make payments. They also do things on a sliding scale. My hernia surgery was less than half the quote I got from the surgeon here. Plus, I only have to pay whatever they say my sliding scale cost is. Does it get any better than that? I think not.

If things go well, I will probably be having the surgery in mid January, the dead time in my work world. I am going to have at least two weeks of serious recovery time after that kind of surgery. It will make this hernia surgery appear like popping a pimple by comparison. So for the first time since I was a teenager, I will have something that sort of resembles a normal body. Sort of anyway. At least I won't have 6 extra inches of flapping skin hanging down off of my arms and legs anymore. I'll still have it hanging off my ass and have a lumpy stomach, but hey, I really don't give a rat's ass about that shit. It's not like anyone is ever going to see me naked in bed ever again.

I just want to be normal, not sexy. Just ordinary looking. I want to be able to wear a tee shirt and not have to worry about it needing to come all the way down to my elbows to hide all that extra skin. I want to be able to wear shorts and not worry about skin hanging down out of the bottom like it does now when I cross my legs. I just want to be normal looking. Is that too much to ask? I think not. This isn't about vanity, this is about feeling like a normal, ordinary person.

My surgeon understood that. She was so enthusiastic when I told her I wanted to lose Rocky and Bullwinkle. She understood that I just want to look like a normal person now that I have lost all this weight.

Sometimes, in fact, most of the time I have a hard time remembering that I am smaller now. I am so not used to being small. I don't stand out in a crowd as the big person anymore. I am just ordinary looking (except for Rocky and Bullwinkle which I hide as best I can).

My stomach is still swollen from the surgery, so when I look down I still see this huge belly. It's not really huge, it just feels that way to me right now. The surgeon says that eventually all the fluids will be absorbed by my body and that I will have this sort of hole where the hernia once was. I kind of see it taking shape right now. I can see where the hole will be once all this swelling is gone. There is all this wrinkled flabby skin starting to sink in there. It's kind of gross in it's own special way. Still, at this point in time it's not enough to make me run off and get a stomach lift. I am good with it all for now.

My surgeon says that I am lucky in that many people who lose huge sums of weight have a huge flap of skin that hangs down off their abdomen. I am lucky because I do not have that. She says I must have been very proportional in carrying my weight. I told her I was actually. Most of my weight was in my ass and thighs. Which is why I have so much extra skin there now.

I am not happy with my ass because, for one thing, I no longer have one, but I am also not willing to endure surgery to have that extra skin removed. Instead I am going to work on pumping up my non existent gluts. Hopefully that will fill a little of that hanging skin on my ass so that it's not so apparent. Wish me luck, I don't even get to think about lifting weights for at least another 6 weeks. My surgeon threatened me with in an inch of my life if I did. She told me to do lots of reps with no weights. Ha! Like what kind of reps? I don't know. I need a physical trainer now. Since I am going to be making monthly payments to UAMS for the next 5 years, I think I will be holding off on finding someone to do that for me.

Anyway, that's where I am at in my head and body right now. Getting better in so many ways day by day. I am rebuilding me, a me that looks normal and is healthy.

I am done for now.

Ciao

I was playing the Sims 2 tonight. Amazingly as my own character, Jay McDonald. I had a dog named Dale. He was a Jack Russell Terrier. He died of old age. I actually got sad over that one. In fact, I didn't save the game because I am going to try to figure out how to keep your dog alive forever, just like you can keep your Sim alive forever if you play the game well enough. I actually miss Dale. He was a great little dog. He was my little buddy.

Course, I wasted several hours of work on my character. I finally got him up to his life long achievement, which pretty much gives you a life that lasts forever. But i am goign to figure out one way or another how to keep Dale from dying. There has to be a way and I am going to find it. This si the first time ever in the Sims 2 Pets that I have bothered to have a pet. There are tricks to this I know. I figured out how to bring humans back to life, I know there is a way to do this with a dog too. I just can't remember what you have to do to make it happen.

I'll be working on this someday in the future. It won't be soon though.

I am off to Little Rock Wednesday morning. Back to see the surgeon and let her poke and prod my stomache for the after surgery check up. Fun eh?

On a more pleasant note, I am down to a size 34 in pants. I don't ever remember being a size 34. A 36 was the smallest I can remember back to in high school.

Wow, my heart still hurts that Dale died. I kind of crack myself up there. This game can make you have real feelings for your characters. I guess I really loved Dale more than I thought I did. What a great little buddy he was. I will bring Dale back forever, I just have to remember what you have to do to resurrect the dead.

Ok, I am weird, so what. At least I know I can still feel, even if it is for something that is not real except in my game.

I am off to bed now.

Ciao

 

What does childhood abuse do to a person? Every day of my life I walk through a fetid forest of survivors of childhood abuse. Mental, physical, sexual, emotional, it's all damaging, it all destroys what could have been in it's wake. It all leaves behind a hollow core of what could have been, what should never have been.

Every day I deal with the walking wounded of childhood abuse. Do I work in a mental health facility? Hell no, I am just an ordinary person, dealing with ordinary people, day in and day out. Every day that goes by though, I run into someone or several someones who are so wounded that they cannot cope with life because of those wounds deep inside them.

In the last several years I decided that I am a strong enough and a healed enough soul to venture getting close to people who are not healed from their severe woundings in childhood. I have concluded after several attempts at allowing these "ordinary folk" in to my inner circle that I m not that strong. It takes someone who has a much greater healing than I and inner strength ten times what I have to deal with these "ordinary people".

What I have discovered is that there are two distinct kinds of abused survivors. There are those who will suck you dry in every way possible (although some of them prefer specific forms of leeching, some however are not as picky and will suck you dry in every way possible). Then there are those who allow themselves to be sucked dry by the leeches.

When I am deep in my own illness, when I have lost my recovery, I tend to fall into the second category exclusively. People with my dysfunction when actively not in recovery tend to draw in people from that first category. We appear strong, therefore, like the loving parent the abused leeching survivor never had and is still seeking out. And we let them suck us dry.

There is no one specifically who is sucking the life out of me right now. There are some hangers on who would like to suck me dry right now, but I only share a minor amount of myself with them. Certainly not enough of me for it to take from my reserves. I got burned out from the last set of leeches so bad that I honestly do not see myself ever being able to be strong enough to deal with people with that depth of dysfunction again anytime in the near to distant future.

Cheryl was probably the worst of the worst of the long list of blood suckers I have attracted over the last 17 years. That experience is still a nightmare I awaken screaming from. I look at these last 17 years and I wonder why I have allowed all this to happen to me. Why have I continued to attract persons who are so unable to do life without needing to suck the life blood out of someone else to survive?  Why do I do that?

I have often thought that it is because most of the people that are blood suckers appear to be free spirits. And I guess I find that attractive. And somehow, for some reason, they are attracted to me.

All of this allowing others in was part of an experiment in relating to others. It was part of learning to love unconditionally. I am not saying it failed, I am thinking more along the lines of I made a miscalculation while mixing chemicals and something in my lab blew up. Now I am a little too shell shocked to go back in the lab again. That last explosion just about took my life. Now I am too afraid to even venture out again into the world of relating. I'm pretty much just sticking to myself. I just don't have it in me anymore to even try to reach out ever again. At least it feels like ever again to me right now.

I don't know what brought that up for me tonight. Other than we watched 1408 tonight and the part with his dead daughter coming to him and making him break down made my heart grieve. Grieving for all the lost loves in life. Grieving for relationships that are dead. Physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. Dead to me forever for whatever reasons. Physical death is somehow the one that is the easiest to handle. Although it is an end in the physical and the separation is painful, still, you know the death of the relationship did not occur because of the emotional sickness residing in both of you. The other deaths are because of emotional sicknesses. That is what killed the relationship. And that hurts worse than anything. They are there, as are you, living life daily with out each other. And all because you are both so sick. And that sickness because you were so abused as children that you never had the opportunity to come out as an adult in a healthy functional way.

And so I stay away from people now. Anyway from them emotionally. I don't have the strength to be open anymore. That explosion did me in for now. And probably for some time to come. Even my loneliness is not enough to compel me to seek out closeness anymore. That was how painful that accident in the laboratory was. Now I spend my time introverted and seeking my solace within. Now I search inside me for answers without benefit of companionship.

Life and learning go on. For however long there is of life, it all goes on and on.

 

 

I dreamed about Debbie last night. She had finally come home to me. Like she had been away on long extended journey. I was so glad to see her. I just wanted to hold her forever. But as dreams go, I did not.

I remember thinking in my dream that Debbie being home again would show every one how marriage is really done. I don't ever remember her saying a word though. Not one word.

She looked just like she did before she got really sick. She was shy as always. Demure in her own normal way. I remember feeling so much love for her. Not that crazy in love shit, just love, pure and simple. Like you love someone you have known and loved all your life.

If she were still alive we would have been together 27 years this last May. I don't feel old enough to have been married for 27 years to someone. I don't feel old enough to feel like I am 53. I feel like I am missing years or something. Like I got older physically, but my mind is still somewhere in my 30's. Am I Rumpelstiltskin? Did I go to sleep for 20 years and just recently wake up? Where did my youth go? I had so much I wanted to get done, I have not done any of it if I recall. I think I have been busy beating my head against a wall. Trying to figure life out and failing miserably sometimes.

Never fulfilling my dreams. Forgetting I had them completely in the onslaught of my trying to survive day to day. I remember my dreams sometimes. I wanted to do my art. That will never happen now. I don't have the time, the space or the energy to do it now. Too much shit in life, too much petty day to day survival and taking care of this world I have become responsible for.

Too much shit. It makes sense that Debbie would come to me in a dream when I feel lost and overwhelmed with this life of mine. She was the only equal partner I have ever had. She knew how to do marriage. She knew how to be there as a partner, as did I. Equally yoked. A good team. We accomplished much together. We built an empire together. I miss that. I miss dreaming with someone about a future to build. I miss making it happen because you both have thesame vision and dream. I miss her. I miss having someone to share my life with.

The rest of my dream was about trying to get through this water way that was underground, in of all places Tulsa. It never ended. Constantly jumping from one level to another, trying not to fall in and be swept away in the water. It just went on and on and never ended. And all I wanted was to go home, to get back to my family.

Now I am sad because I am seriously missing Debbie. Why the fuck did she have to get sick like that? I want to know why I lost my world so young. I want to know why I never found another world like the one I had with her again. And why is there never a real answer? Karma. I'll buy that one.

I must have been one fucked up bastard to have deserved that fate. Fuck eh?

Karma sure can suck sometimes.

Ciao

I wanted to throw a thought down somewhere and this place seemed as good as any at the moment.

I have been chastised a bit the last few days for not letting people help me as much as they could or would if I asked them to help me. This is not unusual. I get chastised often for not asking for help when it's apparent I could use some. The answer as to why I do not ask for help is relatively simple, I am not used to getting help and so I do what comes naturally, I do it myself out of shear determination to survive.

I have learned in my long (or short depending on your perspective) years in this lifetime to become as self sufficent as possible. I learned long ago not to depend on nor trust in anyone else to be there to help you with anything. To believe in or to depend on someone else to be there when you need them is to set them up for failure. It's better to allow them to not fail on some promise they made to be there, when they will succeed quite nicely if they never made such a promise to you in the first place.

I learned as a small child to be as self sufficient as possible. Learned well at my mother's knees that no one would ever be there to help or assist, so learn to do it all on your own and survive as best you can by your own wits and strength. I've learned to survive nicely all on my own. Sometimes life is a little hard having to go it all alone like that, but it is better than to be standing there holding one end of a rope only to find that no one else is at the other end to help anyway.

People will tell you I am stubborn. I will admit I am very stubborn at times. I find it very difficult to ask anyone for any kind of help. Not from some sence of pride or anything of that nature, but because I simply do not know how to ask for help. I am so used to doing everything alone that I have long since lost any ability I might have had in asking for assistance. I honestly lack the ability to say "Hey I could use a hand here." I am so used to taking care of myself and everyone else around me that I have no concievable idea how to do life otherwise.

That is not the kind of stubborn that makes me do things my way or refuse to do something I do not want to do, that's just plain old bullheaded Taureanness. This other thing is more like in my head, asking forhelp was never an option here. It never even occurrs to me that help is an option.

So I put it out to the universe that help would come to me. Help is a relative term. One man's help could be another man's responsibility or poision or meat or whatever. I didn't want to limit how the universe would send me help, so I didn't put any specific demands on what help was to me.

What I did get specific with was the propane tank and my work van. We don't have heat or gas to cook with because we lost our propane tank just before last winter. That was because we were too broke to pay the bill so they came and took it away. Thankfully last winter was mild enough that we were only cold with small electric heaters in our bedrooms. So I have dilligently attempted to find a propane tank as cheaply as possible so that this winter we can actually heat our house. So far nothing cheap has come our way, but then there's still a few weeks left before the cold sets in and we will need the heater. I am still on the quest for the inexpensive way to get a propane tank (filled) installed and heat in our house once again. I am giving the universe every opportunity to come up with some help here.

As for the work van, I put it out there that someon woul dcome along with either transmission repair job that I can afford, or someone to come along and decide that they don't want a perfectly fine working van they own and either give it to me or sell it to me for a ridicoulously low price that I can pay off slowly. So that's out there mulling around in the universe too. Working van and a propane tank. Two things that would cost me $2500 I do not have and will never have all at once and two things I am releasing to the universe to fix the problem for me.

So I have asked for help in the only way I know how. I asked the universe to send me help and I am not passing anything by as possible help from the universe. That's just in case the universe sends the help to me in a way I wasn't expecting and so I wasn't looking when it was dropped in my lap. I am not trying to expect, I am trying to just know that the help will come.

The reason help came up for me tonight is because I was chastised a bit yesterday for not asking for help in and out of bed. Hey, I forget I need help until it's too late and I am stuck in a weird position. Idon't mean to get in that predicament, it just happens because I forget I am not totally able bodied at the moment.

I have been asking Dave to take me to jobs and help me with taking locks on and off doors. I can't really drive on these drugs, so I have to have help. So Dave's there. See, I know how to ask for help. Glenny helps me change my wound dressing, and helps me in and out of bed. Sue helps me in bed (yes I have more trouble getting in than out of bed).  In fact, the first two days after I got home, Glenny gave me my meds on schedule and helped me do almost everything, he even slept on the floor next to my bed to make sure I got my meds on schedule. See? I can receive help. I just don't know how to say I need it, that's all.

I am probably not going to change my self sufficient ways any time soon. At least, I don't see that coming down the pike anytime in the near future anyway. So I think I have done well lately considering my normal behavior. I at least have been accepting help without complaint, well, much anyway.

Not bad for an old, stubborn Taurus.

I haven't been wasted/loaded/high/stoned (I really can't think of any better words to describe how these pain meds make me feel) in a very long time. I don't like this feeling. I guess that means I am getting old, either that or I have gone beyond needing or wanting to be in a state that is altered chemically anymore.

I don't feel out of control, I just feel stupid. I don't particularly care for feeling stupid. I feel slow. Slow witted. I don't like feeling slow witted. Soon the pain will subside enough that I will not require these drugs to ease my discomfort. I am actually slightly shocked that I seem to require less medication than I did after the accident. The accident however, was not precalculated injuries to my body. What I am enduring at the moment was premeditated by the surgical community. This is the second time in the last 7 years that I have undergone a proceedure that I had had 20 something years before hand. Each time the proceedure has proven to be less painful than it's predecessor.  I am guessing that this is medical science advancing as the years go by. All I know is that I am hurting much less than I did the first time they sliced my guts open and then put me back together again.

I hurt, but not so bad that I wish I was dead instead of having to endure the pain. Last time I had surgery on my stomach, they did not give me this cool brace to hold my guts in place as I heal. This time I have a cool brace and man does it really help.

At the rate I am going now, I will be back in full swing in short order. Mind you, I will have to limit what I am lifting and how much I exert myself, but as for getting around and getting back into regular work, I think I will be close to 100% in another couple of weeks. Everything except for that lifting stuff.

Anyway, I know this is boring, but then I am slow witted right now and haven't the ability to get much deeper than to talk about the miracles of modern medical science at the moment.

Thanks to all of you who wished me well (your wishes were granted) and a special thank you to the universe for sending Ian to my rescue with the answer to my most urgent medical need. Thank you universe and thank you Ian for without you I would not be sitting here healing nicely from this much needed medical proceedure. And a special extra thank you to Ian for knowing why I needed my hair cut at midnight before my drive to Little Rock to go under that knife. I want you to know I looked fabulous while they were slicing and dicing my guts up.

Ok, now I am going to attempt to go back to bed. That is a feat in and of it's self as I find it rather difficult to get in bed without help (getting out is easy, getting in takes muscles that hurt like a muther right now to attempt to use). Hopefully I won't need to get out of bed again tonight.

Ciao for now.

I am home. Surgery went well. I don't remember a damn thing after the pre-op relaxing shot. Glen says I was talking up a storm after that shot. I don't remember anything I said. He says I was pretty funny.

They didn't keep me over night. That was good. I am stoned out of my gord right now by the way. Anyway, I am feeling better today than I did yesterday. And I expect I will feel even better tomorrow. I haven't see the incision yet. Glen wants to wait to change the dressing until tomorrow. Apparently they glued me instead of sewing or stapling me up, so it's best to leave the stuff they put on there to hold me together alone for a little while longer.

I haven't asked much about the surgery yet. The doctor came out after surgery and talked to him, but I have been too out of it to even think to ask about it.

So I am doing good, the lump where the hernia was appears to be gone now. I'll keep you updated as the days go by. I am on my way back to bed now. Sitting up this long has taked the strength out of me for now.

Love you all, ciao.

I am leaving for Little Rock in a couple of hours. Tomorrow at 7:15 am they will do surgery on me at the UAMS to correct this hernia. I will be gone for a while, then be down for a bit longer and then I will be back up and running again.

Wish me well, as I will be wishing you all well in my absence.

Ciao for now.

There's a young White Tail doe in my front yard right now. She's over by the 300 + year old Elm tree eating the apple I ran over with the lawn mower yesterday. Something just startled her and she is over by the small creek that runs down to the pond drinking from it's waters.

Now she's run off because Glenny just pulled in to the driveway, home from work. She was at her closest, 35 feet away from me.

One more reason out of the 1409 reasons why living in the Ozarks out in the middle of absolutely no where is better than living in Sherman Oaks, California 6 blocks from the Galleria.

Speaking of the Galleria, for those of you from the Valley, perhaps you remember the construction of the Sherman Oaks Galleria. I do, because, well, my house was 6 blocks away from the construction site. That was back in the early 80's sometime. Might have been 81 or so. The SOG was not the first mall in the Valley, it was just the best to date at the time. It was 3 stories, which at that point in time was a first in the Valley. It was also the first enclosed mall that did not contain a Sears or JC Penny. It only had upscale department stores.  It had two anchor stores, one at either end. I do not remember which ones they were anymore. That is pushing 25 years ago and a whole lot of water under my bridge.

Lots and lots of water.... too many years and memories. I like deer memories. Deer in my front yard, way better than malls down the street from my house.